Crazy job interview questions

In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, we see Sam job hunting. In an interview, he was told by Bruce (John Malkovich) to “impress me”. Sam is caught off guard by the “question” but recovered quickly. So in his best interview pose, he strung out standard manly descriptions of himself. But you could see that what Bruce was waiting for was to see whether Sam is as eccentric as the boss (Bruce). Not seeing that he is in his answers, Bruce told him outright that he was not the person they were looking for. Desperate for a job, Sam felt dejected. He lets out his frustration at Bruce who was just observing him. He saw that underneath the “manly” exterior, Sam is really a funny guy too. Bruce hires him.

Lesson? Be yourself! The real you is an interesting man (woman).

CBS Money Watch.com makes a list of the top 20 craziest job interview questions asked by the top companies in America:

Procter and Gamble: Sell me an invisible pen.

Facebook: Twenty five racehorses, no stopwatch, five tracks. Figure out the top three fastest horses in the fewest number of races.

Citigroup: What is your strategy at table tennis?

Google: You are climbing a staircase. Each time you can either take one step or two. The staircase has n steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb the staircase?

Capital One: How do you evaluate Subway’s five-foot long sub policy?

Gryphon Scientific: How many cocktail umbrellas are there in a given time in the United States?

Enterprise Rent-a-Car: Would you be okay hearing “no” from seven out of 10 customers.

Goldman Sachs: Suppose you had eight identical balls. One of them is slightly heavier and you are given a balance scale. What’s the fewest number of times you have to use the scale to find the heavier ball?

Towers Watson: Estimate how many planes are there in the sky.

Lubin Lawrence: If you could describe Hershey, Godiva and Dove chocolate as people, how would you describe them?

Pottery Barn: If I was a genie and could give you your dream job, what and where would it be?

Kiewit Corp.: What did you play with as a child?

VWR International: How would you market a telescope in 1750 when no one knows about orbits, moons etc.

Diageo North America: If you walk into a liquor store to count the unsold bottles, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do?

Brown & Brown Insurance: How would you rate your life on a scale of 1 to 10?

Jane Street Capital: What is the smallest number divisible by 225 that consists of all 1’s and 0’s?

UBS: If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn?

Merrill Lynch: Tell me about your life from kindergarten onwards.

Susquehanna International Group: Five guys, all of different ages, enter a bar and take a seat at a round table. What is the probability that they are seated in ascending order of age?